Protecting pregnant women from air pollution may improve the birth weight of their babies, a new study suggests. This is especially important for stressed-out mothers who live in neighborhoods burdened by poor air quality. A mother-to-be’s exposure to both air pollution and psychological stress during early to mid-pregnancy can disrupt delicate fetal growth, according to the study authors. “Although air pollution has a harmful effect on many different populations, our study identified the effects on expectant mothers who are already most vulnerable,” said study co-author Zhongzheng Niu. “The addition of high perceived stress is another factor contributing to this issue. We already know air pollution is linked to low birth weight and future disease risk. Protecting pregnant women from these risks would ultimately protect future generations,” added Niu, a postdoctoral scholar and research associate at the University of Southern California (USC) Keck School of Medicine. Having a low birth weight increases an infant’s risks of other health issues, including breathing problems, bleeding in the brain, jaundice, infections and even death. It may also increase long-term disease risks, such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and obesity, the research team noted in a university news release. For the study, the researchers analyzed the issue using data from 628 predominantly low-income Hispanic women who were pregnant between 2015 and 2021. The women…  read on >  read on >

A large new study of U.S. veterans suggests that when prostate cancer screening rates go down, the number of men diagnosed with advanced cancer then rises. Researchers found that across 128 U.S. veterans health centers, the rate of PSA screening for prostate cancer declined between 2008 and 2019 — a period where guidelines came out recommending against routine screening. But patterns varied among the individual centers, with some maintaining high screening rates. And in subsequent years, the study found, a trend emerged: VA centers with higher PSA screening rates had fewer cases of metastatic prostate cancer, while more cases were diagnosed at centers with lower screening rates. Metastatic refers to prostate cancers that have spread to distant sites in the body and cannot be cured. Experts said the findings do not mean that all men at average risk of prostate cancer should be routinely screened for the disease. But the results do add to a longstanding debate over the issue. Prostate cancer is very common: About 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with the disease in their lifetime, according to the American Cancer Society. But the cancer is often slow-growing, and may never progress to the point of threatening a man’s life: About 1 in every 41 men actually die of the disease. That’s why routine screening — with blood tests that measure a…  read on >  read on >

That intense feeling of fear as you watch Jason Voorhees chase his next victim while wearing a hockey mask in “Friday the 13th” might actually be good for you. It also might not be. Researchers report that horror’s impact is really in the eye of the beholder, a little different for everyone but not all bad. “It’s called ‘the paradox of horror,’” explained researcher Dr. Ramnarine Boodoo, a child psychiatrist at Penn State Health’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, “because people generally try to avoid things that make them uncomfortable. So why do people enjoy things like really grotesque horror movies?” Boodoo says one theory is it helps with coping. Humans are equipped with deeply ingrained, unconscious mechanisms that help them respond to stress, wired in from the times when danger might be right outside. For someone watching “The Exorcist,” “you have an activation of what’s called the sympathetic nervous system, which can cause things like an increased heart rate and breathing rate,” Boodoo said in a center news release. “Sometimes it can cause pretty bad feelings of nausea. Sweating. It can often be sort of like a panic attack.” That might be good because for some people it’s pleasurable to have those fight-or-flight mechanisms fire up without any actual danger, similar to riding a roller coaster. It may even help with a person’s ability…  read on >  read on >

People plagued by frequent nightmares may find relief from hearing a specific sound as they sleep, a new, small study suggests. It’s estimated that about 4% of adults have nightmares that are frequent and distressing enough to impair their sleep and daily functioning. In some cases, the nightmares are related to an underlying condition, like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), while others are considered “idiopathic,” or having no known cause. Many nightmare sufferers simply live with them. “Most people either think it’s normal to have so many nightmares, or they don’t know there’s treatment available,” said Jennifer Mundt, a behavioral sleep medicine specialist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. When it comes to nightmare disorder, as it’s officially known, the treatment with the best evidence is imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT), Mundt said. With that technique, people work with a therapist to recall their nightmares, change the negative storyline to one with a positive ending, and then rehearse the new script during the day. Research shows that IRT can start to banish people’s nightmares within two to three weeks. However, around 30% of patients do not respond, according to the new study’s researchers, from the University of Geneva in Switzerland. So, they tried to boost the effectiveness of IRT by adding an approach known as targeted memory reactivation — where people learn to associate a cue, like a…  read on >  read on >

Universities sometimes offer “Pet Your Stress Away” events offering a chance to relax while gently patting the head and stroking the back of a calm dog. But some people are more interested in interacting with cats than dogs, according to a new study that linked preference to personality type. “Our study shows that we may be able to reach a larger audience by offering interventions that include dogs and cats,” said co-author Patricia Pendry, a professor of human development at Washington State University. Folks with strong and highly reactive emotions would benefit from having cats on campus, the study showed. “Emotionality is a pretty stable trait; it doesn’t fluctuate and is a quite consistent feature of our personalities,” Pendry said in a university news release. “We found that people on the higher end of that scale were significantly more interested in interacting with cats on campus,” she noted. “Given that prior research has shown that such individuals may be more open to forming strong attachments to animals, it makes sense they would want cats to be included in these programs.” For the study, the researchers surveyed more than 1,400 students and staff at more than 20 universities. They found that the link between personality and openness to interacting with cats mattered even after accounting for openness to dog visits, owning a cat and identifying as…  read on >  read on >

A tool used to restore forest ecosystems could also be key to the battle against tick-borne disease, researchers say. Forest managers and land owners use prescribed fire to combat invasive species, improve wildlife habitat and restore ecosystem health. A recent study suggests it could also reduce tick populations and transmission of diseases that have proliferated since the early 1900s when fire suppression created forest habitats that favored survival and spread of ticks. “Before the arrival of Europeans, Eastern forests were ‘fire-dependent,’ characterized by fire-tolerant species such as pine, oak and chestnut,” said lead study author Michael Gallagher, a research ecologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service in New Lisbon, N.J. “Frequent low-to-moderate intensity fires would have fostered dry conditions, thinned the understory and diminished layers of leaf litter, which in turn would have created microclimates with lower humidity and higher temperatures,” Gallagher explained. These conditions were likely to limit ticks’ population activity and interaction with hosts, he said. But fire suppression after deforestation enabled species that thrive in moister conditions to become dominate. The result is called mesophication, and it has been widely seen throughout the eastern United States. “In the absence of fire, these mesic habitats moderate forest temperatures and humidity, promote denser understory growth, and cause greater moisture retention in forest litter,” Gallagher said. “This creates microclimates within the ideal range…  read on >  read on >

Despite the presence of gorilla trekkers in their habitat, endangered gorillas in the region surrounding East Africa’s Virunga Volcanoes do not have human herpesvirus, researchers say. The Gorilla Doctors team was able to assess the region’s mountain gorillas in a noninvasive way, simply watching the animals as they walked through the forest. As the gorillas chomped on vegetation such as wild celery and tossed away the stalks, researchers would retrieve the discarded plant and record the name of the gorilla in this conservation area, where they know each one. The plant leavings would be drenched with enough saliva to analyze. Scientists from the University of California, Davis tested the gorilla saliva for orally shed pathogens to rule out the presence of human herpesviruses among these primates. “We were able to do this study entirely using chewed plants,” said study lead author Dr. Tierra Smiley Evans, an epidemiologist and wildlife veterinarian at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “That allowed us to collect specimens from every known, habituated mountain gorilla in Uganda and Rwanda. This shows we can monitor gorillas — and potentially other primate species — over time, noninvasively, at the individual level and help answer questions regarding their conservation,” Evans said in a university news release. It’s an important mission. While herpesvirus may cause minor symptoms in humans, it could be more dangerous…  read on >  read on >